margins of book class

Question

I would like to know what are the margins (top, right,bottom and left; in meters) that are by default assigned for thebook class. Is there a command or a way to know them?

Answer 1

To produce an overview of the layout of the current document, you can use the \layout command from the layout package:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{layout}
\begin{document}
\layout
\end{document}

The ouput is a two page document showing this:

Another option would be to use the layouts package:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{layouts}

\newcommand\DocLength[1]{%
  The value for \texttt{#1} is \printinunitsof{mm}\prntlen{\csname#1\endcsname}\par}
\begin{document}

\DocLength{evensidemargin}
\DocLength{oddsidemargin}

\end{document}

Using the \pagevalues command you will obtain a table of the values of the current document’s page layout parameters; this, together with the showframe option for the geometry package, can be useful when designing a new page layout. A little example with some "extreme" values just for illustration:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperheight=12cm,paperwidth=18cm,includehead,includefoot,showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{layouts}
\printinunitsof{cm}

\begin{document}
\pagevalues
\end{document}

Answer 2

It depends on whether you want to include the header/footer and possibly even if you use twoside document. Perhaps the following minimal working example can be a start:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{layouts}% http://ctan.org/pkg/layouts
\begin{document}
\pagevalues
\end{document}

uses the layouts package to produce

All units are printed in points by default, and there are 0.0351459 points per cm. Note that LaTeX does not use metres as a valid length.